Iraq’s ghost villages: Islamic State drove people away – now a new enemy is preventing their return T he first thing that strikes visitors arriving in Faka, a small village in Sinjar district, northern Iraq , is the silence. No children play in the streets. No shops are open. Roofless houses stretch across the hillside, their walls pockmarked by shellfire, while weeds and wild grasses grow through collapsed living rooms. A decade after Islamic State (IS) swept across the region, war remains visible everywhere. But according to the people who returned, another enemy has quietly taken its place. Rajab Mohammed says the problem in his village of Faka is no longer Islamic State but water and jobs “Today, the problem isn’t only IS,” says Rajab Mohammed, 62, the village’s mukhtar, standing above the ruins of Faka. “It’s water. It’s jobs. It’s the future.” Across Sinjar, abandoned houses now outnumber occupied ones. The battle against IS has ended . The battle to save the villages again...
